Free Republic

The Space and Science Research Corporation (SSRC) announces today that the predicted new cold climate will soon begin to end the historic era of growth in US and global agricultural output that began after the end of World War II. Specifically, as a result of recent events on the Sun and changes in the Earth's climate, the SSRC again warns that record crop yields and volume in the US and Canadian corn, wheat, and soybean belts are about to end. The SSRC expects the first substantial damage could be observed at any time but certainly within the next ten years....

''We've had so much snow and the cold to preserve it,'' Vazzano said. ''We had storm after storm after storm.'' At times the snow was so plentiful it was problematic. The blizzard in late January triggered travel warnings and skiers in the Boston area were shoveling rather than skiing. It was followed closely by four successive weekends of winter storms. Vazzano said a cold spell in February helped preserve the snow but discouraged some skiers. ''When you can't get out of your driveway you can't get to the mountain,'

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is spending $84,000 to study how churches can be used to combat climate change. A taxpayer-funded graduate fellowship at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor is examining 17 faith-based institutions that have implemented "sustainability initiatives" in the hopes of developing workshops to teach pastors and other religious leaders how to change the behaviors of their congregants. "Climate change-which affects traditional faith-based efforts to improve human health, mitigate poverty and redress social inequity-is inspiring religious organizations to advocate for clean air and water, restore ecosystems, and conserve resources," a grant for the project, which began...

There have been times in our geological history when CO2 levels were 10X what they are today, yet warming was only slightly higher. Unlike what you often read in simplistic media accounts, there are a lot of variables in climate and weather and temperature. It takes a lot of things going wrong to turn Earth into Venus and we have never come close. At the Goldschmidt geochemistry conference in Sacramento, geochemists discussed one such period, but they say we just got lucky - a vast mountain range formed in the middle of the ancient supercontinent, Pangea.

At the print edition of Swiss news weekly “Weltwoche”, science journalist Markus Schär writes that not only has the global temperature trend suspiciously been tampered with, but so have the datasets of the Swiss Meteorological Service:

The Sierra Club is turning up the heat on Minnesota's largest utilities with another advertising campaign aimed at coal-fired power plants. The ads target Minnesota Power and Xcel Energy and come, not by chance, as the utilities are developing updates to their 15-year energy plan that go to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission later this year. The television ads started Thursday and will run on cable channels in northern Minnesota and in Xcel's coverage area. As part of its "Energy Forward'' plan to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, Minnesota Power already has stopped burning coal at its Laskin plant in...

Better for states not to comply with the EPA’s plans than to go along and absolve the feds of accountability for the mess. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) set off a firestorm recently when he advised states not to comply with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan. Yet that advice isn’t as radical as his detractors make it sound. As a state public utilities commissioner who deals with the effects of federal regulations on a regular basis, I also recommend that states not comply. ... While the short-term effects may be painful, the long-term consequences of submitting...

That’s a startling question, to be sure. But it’s a question that haunted me during my recent visit to Australia. There, political conservatism is experiencing a revival of sorts after six years of socialist wilderness. While in Australia, I kept thinking about a surprising statement made to me by a prominent American conservative leader during the last U.S. election. At that time, he said, “I will not support the Republican candidate. In fact, I hope Obama wins.” When I couldn’t hide my shock, he went on to explain his perspective: eventually the socialist ideology in our country would over-tip its...

How long will this country remain free? Probably only as long as the American people value their freedom enough to defend it. But how many people today can stop looking at their electronic devices long enough to even think about such things? Meanwhile, attempts to shut down people whose free speech interferes with other people’s political agendas go on, with remarkably little notice, much less outrage. The Internal Revenue Service’s targeting the tax-exempt status of conservative groups is just one of these attempts to fight political battles by shutting up the opposition, rather than answering them. Another insidious attempt to...

Scientists in the Netherlands are one step closer to producing a viable lab-grown alternative to the conventional beef burger patty. Last year, Professor Mark Post and his team of scientists at the Maastricht University in the Netherlands produced the first prototype of a lab-grown burger. Benefits of this new burger production method include a decrease in animal slaughter, savings in land, water, and energy use required for livestock, and a reduction in greenhouse gases. The project has faced several hurdles, though, not the least of which was the enormous price tag of 250,000 Euros, or $273,000. That was roughly how...

Since December 1996 there has been no global warming at all (Fig. 1). This month’s RSS temperature – so far unaffected by the most persistent el Niño conditions of the present rather attenuated cycle – shows a new record length for the ever-Greater Pause: 18 years 4 months – and counting. This result rather surprises me. I’d expected even a weak el Niño to have more effect that this, but it is always possible that the temperature increase that usually accompanies an el Niño will come through after a lag of four or five months. On the other hand, Roy...

At least 56 people were killed early Thursday when a Russian fishing trawler carrying an international crew of 132 sank in the Sea of Okhotsk off the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East. Rescue officials told the Associated Press that 63 crew members of the Dalny Vostok had been saved and the fate of another 15 was unknown. Russia's emergency services said in a statement on their website that more than 26 fishing boats were in the area of the sinking to rescue crew members and recover bodies. Approximately 1,300 people were believed to be involved in the rescue...

Already pegged by The Hill as one of the most vulnerable U.S. Senators facing re-election in 2016, and the only Democrat on that list now that Sen. Harry Reid has decided to retire, Michael Bennet is still scrambling to consolidate his base. With his polling numbers hovering just above the 50% mark among Democrats and Democrat activists actively protesting his fundraisers, we cannot blame him one bit. Bennet’s latest pander was an amendment he introduced last week that effectively declared climate change to be a national security issue. While this might mollify the environmental extremists who comprise a meaningful spot...

Editor’s Note: Patrick Moore, Ph.D., has been a leader in international environmentalism for more than 40 years. He cofounded Greenpeace... Human Emissions Saved Planet Over the past 150 million years, carbon dioxide had been drawn down steadily (by plants) from about 3,000 parts per million to about 280 parts per million before the Industrial Revolution. If this trend continued, the carbon dioxide level would have become too low to support life on Earth. Human fossil fuel use and clearing land for crops have boosted carbon dioxide from its lowest level in the history of the Earth back to 400 parts...

resident Obama has found himself at odds with his old law school mentor over the Environmental Protection Agency. Laurence Tribe, a liberal constitutional scholar at Harvard University, told House lawmakers that EPA carbon dioxide regulations are tearing the Constitution apart. “EPA possesses only the authority granted to it by Congress,” Tribe told lawmakers in a hearing Tuesday. “Its gambit here raises serious questions under the separation of powers… because EPA is attempting to exercise lawmaking power that belongs to Congress and judicial power that belongs to the federal courts.” “Burning the Constitution should not become part of our national energy...

The South by Southwest (SXSW) Festival is happening now in Austin, Texas. Running from March 9 to 22, it’s a massive film, interactive and music festival that is nearly 20 years old. The festival brings together designers, developers, investors, entrepreneurs and politicians for panels and discussions about technology and innovation. For the third time in the last few years, Al Gore, founder and chairman of the Climate Reality Project, spoke at the festival on Friday. Naturally, his interactive discussion focused on addressing the climate crisis. The former vice president focused on the need to “punish climate-change deniers, saying politicians should...

Aaron Stark, (7, in the second grade at Haycock Elementary School in Fairfax County, Virginia) asks Governor Scott walker some questions about climate change at the 2015 CPAC convention. -----:35 VideoLittle boy walks up to ask Gov. Walker a question. Gov. Scott Walker leans down to listen. Aaron: "If you were president, what would you do about climate change?" Walker: "What would I do about that? Well you know I was a boy scout, and always thought maybe campsites should be cleaner when we leave than when we found it, so I'd try to work with people that care about...

The debate over climate science has taken a nasty turn. Vice President Biden painted skeptics of climate change as stupid in a recent interview. "I Ihink it’s close to mindless,” he said of skeptics on the HBO program “Vice.” “I think it’s like, you know, almost like denying gravity now.” This is a stunning development, that the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, who should know more than anybody else in the world, who’s proposing hundreds of billions of dollars in costs to prevent this climate and temperature increases, doesn’t know whether their projections have been right or wrong,” Sessions...

Any country which will forbid advertising on its territory will see its greenhouse gases emission diminishes for at least 50% in the subsequent years. Because, the real greenhouse gas responsible for our environment destruction is from our mind, not from the cow @$$! In autumn 2013, I attended a European conference on innovation during the Council of Europe summit in Vilnius. One of the conference theme was “climate change and innovation”. I was disgusted by what I heard. Over a thousand people were in the room, and the speaker went on with impressive conviction to demonstrate how climate change is...

One gallon of jet fuel burned creates about 19 pounds of C02. A 747 burns about 25,000 pounds of fuel per hour. A round trip from Washington DC to LA would take about 11- 11 1/2 hours. That comes to about 287,000 pounds of fuel. And that results in the production of about 5,462,500 pounds of CO2. A 757 burns about 6,000 pounds of jet fuel per hour. A similar round trip to LA would burn about 69,000 pounds of fuel and create about 1,310,000 pounds of CO2. Barack Obama and Michelle Obama both traveled to Los Angeles on the...